Wrapping the mountain from East to North to South Date Climbed: Jul 19, 2016

Coming back from Mount Goode and being still 9AM, I decided to not let the day go to waste. Unfortunately the research I did on Picture Puzzle said that the North couloir is the best way to go to the top. That is not true. It must be the easiest, going from Ruwau Lake, but that entitles to wrap around the mountain, going from notch to notch, until getting to the West couloir that goes up to the summit. Finding the real summit is tricky. Without the GPS on my phone, I would've climbed all of the false summits before the real one. The real summit is all the way to the South, not really visible from anywhere else but from the West side. I came down the West couloir wich would make a direct, sometimes class 3, way of going up. The trouble is that if one doesn't know where the West couloir is exactly located, it is tricky to spot. I needlessly wrapped around the mountain from Saddlerock Lake going North, than East, than South for 2.5 miles just to make the summit. The West couloir is only .5 mile up/down. But I bagged this peak. Not many parties going up there I noticed: one in 2014, one in 2015 and three (including me) in 2016.

Partnered with B-Nick and Deb for some peakbagging on Picture Puzzle and Agassiz. Located a chute on the most center section of the west face to be somewhat pleasurable. The entry into the chute is fun 3rd/4th. After 150', the fun ends. And as Blair mentioned, the middle section is a loose scree/talus slog. If one followed the main chute as it closes in with the summit, it would be more of that thankless slogging. But we found a spot, before the chute bends right then back left behind the last turret/buttress, where a large wall that faces true west, to raise the fun-factor. Stellar "Norman Clyde 4th Class" climbing...solid to its appex (approx 160'). As we climbed, we aimed toward a "right pointing gendarme" and a gendarme on the right skyline. On the other side of this wall is a somewhat loose 3rd class downclimb to a notch and over to the summmit slope (3rd class). We descended in the main chute after downclimbing from the summit. 2 1/2 stars out of 5. Had there been more of that amazing 4th class, this would have easily been a 4 star route!

Climbed this w Deb and Dave, found it similar in spots to cloudrippers w chute we did last year. There was a big section in the middle that was crap class 2 but mostly class 3-4 on decent rock, with some 5th class here and there, more up high on a headwall under the summit. 2 or 3 stars

With Rick Kent in June 07. Easy scrambling up the north slope. Fun scrambling as you near the top. Found a register near a notch by the northernmost pinnacles. From there, traversed east around the false summit pinnacles and south to the notch north of the summit. Then scrambled easily to the top.

Rick continued south from there, but I had to get back to Bishop. I dropped back down to the notch north of the summit, then headed down and west. Class 2-3 scrambling down the west face chute took me all the way to easy ground a couple hundred yards from the Bishop Pass Trail.